TIMé 15 A 5TRéAM E UNICE, her daughter, had a way of quoting "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly," but not, Mrs. Throck- morton noticed, if it were Eunice who had to do it. Old Mrs. Throckmorton disliked the quotation in any case-to her, it sounded like a quip, and she dis- liked all quips-but for Eunice to say it now was cruel. The only possible way to do this-Eunice would have called it a business, but to old Mrs. Throckmorton it was a breaking, a tearing apart-the only way for her was to do it slowly, so that the tear could be made little by little and the living tissue be given time to heal itself. Mrs. Throckmorton's lips were firm and disagreeable, but her soul was rocked, and she shrank and trem bled. StandIng in the drawing room, where the packing cases were already full, with her finger she touched the peacock- feather fan that Eunice had taken, with other things to be sold, out of the cabi- net. The fan should have stayed in the cabinet, where its colors had remained rich and brilliantly tender for years- "years that the locust hath eaten, but they hath not eaten the feathers," said Mrs. Throckmorton. "Locusts can't be figurative and actu- al," said Eunice, in her crisp, sure young VOIce Eunice was sensible, ruthlessly sensi- ble. You could be ruthlessly sensible, Mrs. Throckmorton thought, if you had a short nose; with a long nose it was not endearing. Eunice's nose was slightly long, it was a Dunbar nose. Mrs. Throckmorton's mother-in-law had been a Dunbar. Eunice was a thor- ough Dunbar. Sometimes Mrs. Throck- morton could not help wishing that Damaris had been able to come, or the more gentle Anne, but Eunice had no children, and Eunice, of course, was such an excellent manager; she man- aged her husband (whom Mrs. Throck- morton often thought of as poor Tom) so that she was always free to get away. Eunice was to take Mrs. Throckmorton to the hotel in London and stay with her for a few days and find somewhere for her to settle. Mrs. Throckmorton sigh ed. The fan had been brought back to England from-India? China? Java? Anyway, from far jungles, where the peacock had flown alive and wild. Now it was transmuted into a fan, and the fan had outlasted the peacock. Uncle Mc- leod had brought it home. "Your Great- Uncle Mcleod," she told Eunice now, though she had told her this many times before. There was always a Mcleod, as there were always a Eustace, a Eunice, a Damaris, and an Anne. "That is Uncle Mcleod, in the Benjamin West-with the white frilled trousers, holding the hoop. Where is the Benjamin West?" "Packed," said Eunice. She hid a lit- tle yawn as she pushed in the straw of the last big case. "This will be all to go tomorrow," she said. Mrs. Throckmorton did not see U n- cle Mcleod as the little boy in the pic- ture. She saw him in the dining-room chair where he had sat when she was first brought in by her husband to shake hands with him. His head was bent; the creases of his- chin went into his cravat. Cravat? I must be very old, thought Mrs. Throckmorton, but it was a cra- vat. The cravat was white, like the frilled trousers, but glossy; the chin full and flesh pink-the pink of an Ophelia rose. She could still see him clearly; he seemed far more alive than Eunice, with her neat, mouse-colored head, clear, blue eyes, and quick, clearing-away hands. Mrs. Throckmorton drew a feather, with its deep eye, slowly through her fingers; the eye stared up at her. She sighed and put the fan back in the cabinet. "Mother, you have put that fan away . ,,, aga'ln. "Yes, Eunice." "As fast as I sort things out, you muddle them up. You know aU the things in the cabinet are to be sold. We decided that. You can't keep every- thing." "N 0," said Mrs. Throck- morton slowly. "You will be far more free," argued Eunice. "I do not wish to be free," said Mrs. Throckmorton. Her voice was still as deep as a bell. "You know very well-" began Eunice, but Mrs. Throckmorton inter- rupted her. "One does not wish to be free of one's house," she said in her bell voice. "N ot even in this generation." I T was, Mrs. Throckmorton ac- knowledged with pride, a big house. Its lines of windows reflected the day as they reflected morning and evening, the passing of night, sunrise and sun- set; through the panes, the light, fil- tered green from the elms, fell on the floor and washed the walls; through the panes you looked out at elms 19 where the rooks built, at fields, flocks, and quiet gray walls. In front of the house was a ha-ha; she remembered writing that to her mother In her first letter from the house. "\That IS a ha-ha? A sunk fence with a ditch, to separate lawns from fields. "Our parkland is green fields," she had written to her mother) "with elms and chestnut trees." There were nuts, too, in the lanes, from the hazels, she wrote, and "at night the moon and the smell of country rise over the fields; sometimes a white cat, gone hunting, slinks by the new-mown hay; there are white lilacs in the garden and Inagnolias against the wall. . . ." At first, she had not liked the mag- nolias. "Why not, my love?" Eustace had asked. "They seem-they seem to eat the house," she said. He spoke of the grace of the magnolias in the J apa- nese painting in the study. "Japanese painters etherealize," she had said. "These magnolias are real." She had grown to like the magnolias. Now, in the years, they had reached the roof. The chimneys were tall, clear, and strong, and theIr smoke rose, or did not rise, giving a message to the neigh- borhood. "\Ve look to the big house," the people used to say. They would not say that now. Mrs. Throckmorton sighed. The swallows flew back and built under the eaves of the house ever} year. They would still do that. Thé house would not change-for the swallows. "l\10ther, you are looking white You should go and lie down." Eunice opened the cabinet door to take out the fan. "Eunice, I beg of you, leave that fan where it is- for today." "Wh y not get i done?" asked Eunice sensibly. She laid her hand, not unkindly but firmly, on her mother's shoulder; through the gray dress, she could feel how its bones were hunched and bent; they increased her firmness. "You must accept this, Mother." "I do." Mrs. Throckmorton's voice could be harsh as well as deep-dis- agreeable to hear. Eunice winced, but she stroked her mother's shoulder. They were nearer in that moment than they had been all this time. The older wom- an seemed to sink and sway, as if an eddy had caught her under her daugh- ter's hand. "I do," she said, as if she gasped, and then she came up for breath. "I do, but you can't expect me to- to-" "Enjoy it," she had meant to say, but what she said was "endure it." "Well, then, as we have to have